New Orleans - February 21, 2018

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

With Fr. Kammer

We kicked off our final day visiting the city of New Orleans by waking up at 7:00 sharp and making some sandwiches for lunch.  Our chaperones, Ms. Myers and Mr. McGonagle (with the help of the Center for Ethical Living!), supplied us with some great food, including American cheese and honey smoked ham. At 8:30, we started making our way to Loyola University over on St. Charles Ave, New Orleans, Louisiana. We took the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway there, which took about 30 minutes to cross. There, we were greeted by Father Kammer, SJ. He brought us on a brief walk through the beautiful campus, and into the chapel. We sat down and he enlightened us on the many underlying problems that preceded and were worsened by Hurricane Katrina, such as poverty and lack of jobs, the housing authority, the criminal justice system, public education, health care, and the challenges faced by Latino newcomers. 

After our talk with Father Fred Kammer, we headed to the Whitney Plantation in Wallace, Louisiana. I myself had heard about how powerful it could be but just the concept of a plantation in the form of a museum, focusing on the slaves instead of slave owners, brings along a lot of thoughts and emotions. There was a book on display at Whitney called “Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters” which I vividly remember reading as a kid and it brought back a lot of memories and concepts as far as the importance of character versus selfishness. We have seen that character dynamic here a lot in New Orleans with the amazingly welcoming environment. Everyone received a tag with a slave to focus on right before the tour, a replica of which could be seen around the plantation at some point in the tour. As the tour continued, there were memorial walls with quotes of horror and difficult distress through unimaginable times and famous images of slavery to accompany it. We toured the Big house and were shown the swamps runaway slaves would have to go to if they were attempting to reach freedom. We got to walk around slave cabins and just the fact that multiple people had to share them made the visual made the experience surreal. A slave Jail was also present that would hold 12 people which was absurd because there was simply no room for that many people. What has been commonly taught to us in class was a very different to the point that none of us knew what to think. America is known to have no conscience about the ugly side of its history but today was a chance to see and explore that side.

At Whitney Plantation

After an eye-opening tour of the Whitney Plantation, we made our way back to the house. Here we were greeted by Rev. Deanna and we had a brief, but impactful discussion on everything we’ve seen so far down here in Louisiana. After that, we all walked to the Unitarian Church right next to where we were staying. We enjoyed a scrumptious potluck with members of the community and all had a great time. In my opinion, there was no better way to end off an already great, and stupendous day.  The food was very good and coupled with the very wise men and women who were also the cooks made for a great night.

Potluck dinner with NSUU community

Paul and Jeovany